Daphne's Myles Pierce follows father's footsteps in Senior Bowl

Plenty of players at the Reese's Senior Bowl will tell you being invited to the annual all-star game is a dream come true and something they've looked forward to their whole lives. When Myles Pierce says that, there's not an iota of hyperbole involved.

"This is something that's been on my mind since I started playing football at maybe 4 or 5," Pierce said, "so I've been looking forward to it basically my whole life."

An inside linebacker from The Citadel, Pierce was aware of the Senior Bowl at such an early age because his father, Michael Pierce, came to the 1990 game as a running back from Tulane.

"I was definitely proud," Pierce said about receiving his Senior Bowl invitation. "I've spent my whole life looking up to my father and listening to stories of everybody around me always telling me how good of a running back he was at Murphy (High School) and Tulane. So this is something just living up to what he's done and pushing forward to continue that legacy. It's definitely something I'm proud of."

The Senior Bowl invitation was a double bonus for Pierce, because it also will give him the opportunity to play in front of the home folks one more time. Pierce was a prep standout at Daphne.

"It's been a dream come true for me," Pierce said. "Playing so far away in Charleston, a lot of my family and friends don't ever get to see me play, so we're definitely going to have a big crowd here."

Pierce and his father aren't the only football players in the family. Myles' brother Michael, a former Daphne and Samford standout, is the nose tackle for the Baltimore Ravens.

Coming from a "football family," Myles Pierce said he had no shortage of instructors "teaching me how to do things the right way."

Pierce said his brother, who just completed his second NFL season, had "helped me with what the scouts are looking for, how the process works and preparing your body for an NFL season and the combine and training."

Pierce was not, as he termed it, "a big recruit" coming out of Daphne. But The Citadel got some Daphne when he joined the Bulldogs.

"The nature of how Daphne plays football, especially on defense," Pierce said went along with him to Charleston. "We always harp on being physical and beating the other teams up, and that's something I was able to take to college, and that's something I continue to play with, just that chip on my shoulder to represent Alabama well all the way up to South Carolina."

Pierce said he and the other so-called "small-school" players at the Senior Bowl are examples that all-stars can come from anywhere.

"Wherever you go, if you can work hard wherever you're at, you can build yourself up and become a player where you can open the eyes of the pro scouts," Pierce said. "It doesn't matter what school you're going to, the competition you're playing. I think there's a D(ivision)-III guy here, as well. If you just put in the work, no matter where you go, you're going to be found."

But scouts usually aren't as familiar with small-school prospects, so the Senior Bowl gives them an opportunity for equal exposure.

"I just want to make sure they know that I can make the plays from sideline to sideline," Pierce said of his goals for Senior Bowl Week. "When they look at my tape, they see me doing a lot of run-stopping. I want them to know that I can cover the receivers from the bigger colleges and make those plays from sideline to sideline."

While most of the Senior Bowlers are devoting full-time to preparing for their next step in football, Pierce is heading back to The Citadel to complete his undergraduate degree in accounting after Saturday's game. He'll be graduating in May.